Mr. Willie Noone:

The JIRC is being bandied about by both the Government and Bord na Móna as the means by which we can solve all the difficulties that present. However, Edenderry power station, for example, has no agreement to go under the council. The station is heading into a dispute because the health cover of employees has been take away as part of a Bord na Móna policy. For years, the company would not allow workers there to go under the council. Furthermore, AES, which is the resource recovery business, does not come under the JIRC and, in addition, does not even come under the group of unions umbrella, because Bord na Móna would never allow it to do so. For the company to say now that the council is an appropriate forum to solve the dispute beggars belief.

Mr. Doyle noted that the just transition framework for the coal industry in Spain includes a facility for redeployment of workers within the sector. We are facing a situation shortly in Edenderry where qualified people working in the power station will be looking for work, and that work will not be in rehabilitating bogs. They may be able to get jobs in other companies, as was mentioned, but we have no forum to discuss that. We also have no forum to discuss the situation of those people who were given their walking papers last Friday without any commitment that training will be given.

The other major issue is that, for the past 100 years, the trade unions in this country operated under a voluntarist code. For the Government to insist that they must go into a binding forum raises difficulties for the trade union movement because there is no agreement to do so.